On March 26, 2025, USCIS announced that as of March 5, 2025, it has received enough petitions to fill the 33,000 H-2B visas available for the second half of fiscal year 2025. Cap-subject H-2B petitions requesting employment dates of April 1, 2025 or later will now be rejected by USCIS.
This announcement also confirmed the timeline for Supplemental Cap filings. On March 20, 2025, USCIS began accepting returning worker supplemental cap petitions for start dates of April 1, 2025 through May 14, 2025 (19,000 additional visas). Then on April 21, 2025, USCIS will begin accepting returning worker supplemental cap petitions for start dates of May 15, 2025 through September 30, 2025 (5,000 additional visas). Further, USCIS has also resumed accepting supplemental cap petitions for nationals of the Country-Specific Allocation (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica, who are exempt from the returning worker requirement) (12,862 out of 20,000 visas remaining as of March 27, 2025).
Now that the H-2B cap is reached, USCIS also continues to accept cap-exempt H-2B petitions under the following qualifications:
- Change of employer petitions with request to extend stay in H-2B status;
- Out-of-country petitions for beneficiaries who have already been counted against the 66,000 H-2B Congressional limit for FY2025; and
- Petitions for workers in the fish roe processing industry and labor services in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands or Guam.
This welcomed and highly anticipated USCIS announcement came three weeks after the predicted last day of the cap. Historically, USCIS has made an announcement within a week of the cap being reached. The efforts of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and H-2B employer advocacy groups helped encourage the timely release of the Supplemental Caps that were promised by the prior administration in the December 2, 2024 Temporary Final Rule.
On January 1-3, applications for 149,953 H-2B positions for an April 1st start date were received by the Department of Labor (“DOL”) and randomized into processing groups A through G. Group A was enough to fill the initial 33,000 visas available, and DOL is currently processing cases in Group E through G. Each group has applications for 20,000 H-2B spots. As such, we anticipate that the returning worker supplemental cap will likely be reached quickly as employers with certifications from Groups B through G compete for the limited supplemental cap numbers.
For April 1st start date employers in later groups as well as later April and early May start date employers, we encourage you to recruit cap-exempt in-country H-2B workers while your case certification is pending. The Country-Specific Supplemental Cap allotment also remains a good recruitment option. As in prior years, the Country-Specific supplemental visa numbers will likely remain available into late spring and potentially early summer.
